A man visits Madam Vastra in Victorian London and tells her that bodies have been tuning up in a Yorkshire town , their flash turned crimson , Doing an autopsy finds that the last thing one of their victims saw was The Doctor . Vestra , Jenny and Stax depart to Yorkshire to solve the mystery of the crimson horror
There's something about a Mark Gatiss scripted episode . He wrote the season one episode The Unquiet Dead that still remains one of the finest episodes from NuWho . With the exception of this all his other stories contain a good premise but in their execution something seems to go wrong somewhere and this is summed up perfectly with The Crimson Horror , an episode with so much unfufilled potential
The episode gets off to a great start where a body is hidden under a shroud . The shroud is lifted up to reveal a dead man , his flesh turned red and his dead eyes staring straight ahead . It's a quietly effective moment from the show that shows its influences from the very best Hammer horror movies such as THE REPTILE and THE GORGON . All the building blocks are there to make a classic horror episode which the original show was famous for . Add to this a couple of prestigious actresses Diana Rigg and Rachael Stirling to the guest cast what could possibly go wrong ?
Two things - the script and the production . Someone somewhere and I think it must have been Steven Moffat has developed Gatiss script very poorly . Instead of playing up to the horror elements he's more focused on smart one liners . Indeed the whole plot mechanics seem set around snappy jokes which sometimes work such as Strax pulling out a gun and stating this is the fourth horse he's had to shoot but more often than not become totally repetitive and unfunny such as someone constantly fainting . This means the audience are served up a messy runaround . This is not drama this is Victorian farce
It's summed by by the ending where the Doctor and his colleagues are in the tower and the villain Winifred Gillyflower releases a ballistic rocket in to the atmosphere and yet the laws of physics are totally ignored where the rocket takes off but fails to incinerate the Doctor and his companions . Some people may claim because DOCTOR WHO is fantasy then this is forgivable but they miss the point that science fiction works best when disbelief is totally suspended due to the conviction of the writing . Read anything by HG Wells or John Wyndham or watch a teleplay by Nigel Kneale to see how it should be done . Regardless of genre the laws of physics should never be ignored if you're writing drama
In summary this is yet another episode from the Smith / Moffat era that had great potential and yet seems to have been sabotaged by the production team trying to entertain the audience instead of compelling them . It is entertaining to a degree but is also rather pointless and silly lacking in any sort of gravatis and giving the much hated perception that DOCTOR WHO is a programme for children
There's something about a Mark Gatiss scripted episode . He wrote the season one episode The Unquiet Dead that still remains one of the finest episodes from NuWho . With the exception of this all his other stories contain a good premise but in their execution something seems to go wrong somewhere and this is summed up perfectly with The Crimson Horror , an episode with so much unfufilled potential
The episode gets off to a great start where a body is hidden under a shroud . The shroud is lifted up to reveal a dead man , his flesh turned red and his dead eyes staring straight ahead . It's a quietly effective moment from the show that shows its influences from the very best Hammer horror movies such as THE REPTILE and THE GORGON . All the building blocks are there to make a classic horror episode which the original show was famous for . Add to this a couple of prestigious actresses Diana Rigg and Rachael Stirling to the guest cast what could possibly go wrong ?
Two things - the script and the production . Someone somewhere and I think it must have been Steven Moffat has developed Gatiss script very poorly . Instead of playing up to the horror elements he's more focused on smart one liners . Indeed the whole plot mechanics seem set around snappy jokes which sometimes work such as Strax pulling out a gun and stating this is the fourth horse he's had to shoot but more often than not become totally repetitive and unfunny such as someone constantly fainting . This means the audience are served up a messy runaround . This is not drama this is Victorian farce
It's summed by by the ending where the Doctor and his colleagues are in the tower and the villain Winifred Gillyflower releases a ballistic rocket in to the atmosphere and yet the laws of physics are totally ignored where the rocket takes off but fails to incinerate the Doctor and his companions . Some people may claim because DOCTOR WHO is fantasy then this is forgivable but they miss the point that science fiction works best when disbelief is totally suspended due to the conviction of the writing . Read anything by HG Wells or John Wyndham or watch a teleplay by Nigel Kneale to see how it should be done . Regardless of genre the laws of physics should never be ignored if you're writing drama
In summary this is yet another episode from the Smith / Moffat era that had great potential and yet seems to have been sabotaged by the production team trying to entertain the audience instead of compelling them . It is entertaining to a degree but is also rather pointless and silly lacking in any sort of gravatis and giving the much hated perception that DOCTOR WHO is a programme for children